Yes, I know I left off the sabre, but to be honest once it came down to it, I found the sabre sort of like the stock base, overcomplicated and superfluous to the overall mood of the piece. I rather envision Jackson, perhaps at a Christmas party, dressed nicely, and in the distance hearing the din of battle through the hills and valleys, and looking off in the distance, as uncertain as he was steadfast.

This was a pleasure to paint, I'd love to do more from Verlinden's great line of resins.

Mixing various sands and modelling ballast, I began coating the base for texture

Even washed a few bits of gravel from my driveway to use as boulders.

Over all this i put a wash of ogryn flesh, which has a nice muddy reddish color to it (and its certainly useless for actual flesh)

Regular old PVA Elmer's school glue, best stuff for flocking bases with sand.

Static grass I feel looks best in large amounts, especially the more brightly colored GW type:

Dried Parsley makes decent leaves

Since I didn't want to buy pigments (well, I WANTED to, just couldn't afford it) I used chalk pastels and crushed em up, mortar and pestle style with one of Ophelia's wooden blocks. Then I dusted it over like rouge for a nice dried trail dust effect

This series is primarily to focus on the actual painting of Stonewall, so I'm going to gloss over most of the basing. Standard pinning, some contour putty and frocking on a wooden plinth, nothing special. I really had hoped to get further tonight as I wanted him mounted to finish his boots, but I ran out of CA and had to use Testor's, which is super slow drying apparently (I haven't used this stuff since I was a kid... still smells GREAT... its weird as a modeller you become a connoisseur of glues without actually just sitting and huffing them... mostly)

So this post will be primarily just pics, although I'm happy with his binoc case.

Around his collar and on his gloves I started with Vallejo pale sand. Naturally, the nozzle was clogged, so I tried to clear it out with an X-Acto blade tip. Then I squeezed it over my palette... and squeezed... and squeezed... and BAMF! nozzle popped out and the entire bottle splattered across my whole painting table. Luckily Stonewall was spared, and no major works were affected, but a couple of semi abandoned pieces got a drop or two, and most of my tools got a rich striping, including my wash basins, my palette, the wall, my glasses, hell, the lamp got some. ANYWAYS, once cleanup was finished, those areas got coverage, about 3 -4 layers for a nice solid color. I used some of the W&N oils naples yellow hue to give the collar a bit of a blend, which looks pretty spiffy I feel. Just to get a feel for the gloves, I put a thin thin wash of GW devlan mud (the first GW paint to touch the model), and used Vallejo flat earth to put a base coat onto everything that will be gold, so buttons, collar insignia, and forearm flocking. Then another bit of devlan mud over that, and once dry, a wet brush layer of vallejo shining gold. Pretty happy, although painting tiny wreaths is something I've never been very good at, especially with metallic paints.

Metallics are both simple and a nightmare. Its basically a pigment with glitter in the carrier. Maybe due to this extra mass, they get extremely globby and tend to separate so much quicker than normal colors. That being said, Vallejos are a lot better than most metallics, due to the miniscule grains of glitter as opposed to larger flakes found in ...say... GW paints (sounds like I loathe GW paints, but I dont, I just dont like them for a lot of things that Vallejo or others do better, although GW washes and foundation paints are well worth the coin, unless youre mixing your own washes (more on that in a future post)). Once that all dried, in a fit of excitement, I painted his hair. You'll notice there is a sharp, bright line between his hair and his skin, which looks terrible. I'll be using a glazing technique to smooth that out, but I wanted the black to be completely dry (still wet in the pics, hence the gloss sheen).

However by the time I got to this point, its nearly 2am. I'm running on mostly coffee at this point, and I'm beginning to get the shakes. Which brings me to my next point.

Potassium. This is a trick surgeons use to keep their hands steady: eat a banana or two and get a burst of potassium into your bloodstream, which helps to steady the shakes. When youre painting, its important to be comfortable. comfy chair, comfy climate, comfy music. But its even mroe important to be comfortable in your own body. you cant paint well if your body isnt doing what you want it to. have some food on your stomach. have a banana. have something to drink on hand and stay hydrated. Your brush will be like a richter scale if youre shaking too much (and we ALL shake), so do as much as possible to satisfy simple needs like hunger and thirst.

Not a lot left, dying to get it finished! Then we can base him, let it dry, and ship him off (I dont see this being done in time to mail for Christmas, but itll be there before 2012 I hope)

Starting from where we left off, first thing was building highlights and shadows around the eyes

Pupils were a tad tricky due to his squint, but they look nice imho.

Here you can see the eyelid highlighting, which is never a spot you ever imagine yourself. I held the figure upside down for this phase, an old pencilling trick to trick your eye into viewing it as a series of shapes instead of a human face.

Here you can see several things. First off, I'm using a blank CD as a palette. This was a last resort sort of thing. Secondly, the basic gist here is applying thick gobs of both highlights and shadows, then blend them together with a larger dry brush. this larger brush is still tiny. And thirdly, my dirty ass fingernails. You're welcome.

At this point he looks a little drunk because theres too much violet in the mix. I corrected this, but you can see the effects of the wet blend

OVERHEAD SHOT!! Don't you just feel like Stallone in Cliffhanger right now?

Compare with the skintone above

The finished flesh. The rest of the piece will be basically acrylics, which is an entirely different technique, but should result in a great variation in paint tone between clothing and skintone. I love the finished look though, he really looks like hes been out on the march for weeks on end, sunburnt and weathered. I can't wait to see how it looks once his hair is colored properly.

And beginning to paint his frock. This is gonna take forever, and I really wish I was equipped for airbrushing, but hey there is ALWAYS just that "one more" tool you gotta have. Once I've got an airbrush, I'm sure there will be some other fancy doo-dad I can't live without (zomg! how can I paint this without a surround sound system playing the lord of the rings soundtrack!?) but never let that stop you. Yes there's good gear and there's ideal gear, but whatever you have will probably get you a lot farther than you think. I remember sitting in my bedroom as an awkward teen, my only paint table was a spare shelf, and I'd sit on the old broken down loveseat, setting drying models on the arm with a layer of paper towels. no thinning, no water, just globbing paint right out of the pot onto my undeserving miniatures. My results might have been less than ideal, but I was doing it, and I learned. I picked up techniques and saw what could be done, and slowly improved, but I still started with crappy synthetic brushes and whatever colors of GW paint I could afford from Mike's Comics in New Baltimore, MI.